Maybe you want to make up to your partner for something stupid you've done or maybe you're bored. It doesn't matter, you've found the perfect recipe and you're willing to commit the whole evening to making it a reality. Problem is, nothing is as deceiving as a recipe. Not even those icebergs that threatened the Titanic. I mean, that lasagna may look pretty in the pictures and the steps may sound so simple, anyone could do it but it couldn't be further from the truth. That, however, was enough to fool you and now you're as oblivious as the ship's captain, heading towards a disaster. A kitchen disaster.
Bored Panda has collected some of the funniest examples of food expectations vs. reality to make you feel like an iron chef. After all, we all need some encouragement. From stained glass cookies that look like they've just committed suicide to a rice bear that is more mummy than bear, these dishes make you wonder if someone was brave enough to eat them. Scroll down to take a look why sometimes it's better to simply order a pizza and vote for your funniest entries.
This post may include affiliate links.
Was Asked To Make Food Network's Brown Sugar Pecan Bears
Adorable Rice Bear
Chocolate Hedgehog Cake
It's A Good Thing Cats Don't Care About Cake
My Wife Made Croissants For Breakfast. Nailed It!
Not So Much ‘Arrrrah, How Cute’ And More ‘Arrrrraahhh What The F*** Is That?'
Why did they make it with different ingredients? ^^; They shouks follow the recipe. :p
That seems to be a running theme for all of these kitchen disasters.
Load More Replies...
Just sign the kid who's going to be served this with a therapist, now. Make sure he/she is a young one because the kid's going to be in therapy for a long, long time. Also, that's what happens when you try to turn everything vegetarian. It doesn't always work.
if u want it to not fail like that u should try using the same ingredients
WTF THATS SUPPOSED TO BE A RICE BEAR WHY YOU USING THINGS OTHER THAN RICE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!
Apples and oranges. The monster one looks pretty cool. Great for Halloween.
This is why kids refuse to eat broccolli or be in the same room with it!
I don't think I'd ever eat broccoli again after seeing that on my plate.
Great way to get your kids to eat their veggies! "KILL IT... BEFORE IT KILLS YOU!!!"
It still turned out ok. They just put a cuddly monster to bed instead of a teddy bear.
I'm No Cook But I Didn't Expect To Screw Up A Baked Potato
Spongebob And Patrick Have Seen Things
I Don’t Think This Project Could Have Been Saved
So Close...
I Made A Santa Shaped Bread From A Recipe I Found, It Turned Out A Bit Different From The Picture
Elmo Fail
Uhm, i can't concentrate on the second picture mutant Elmo because first picture Elmo has a weird erection.
Please Kill Me
My Wife Made A Dragon Cake For Her Mother's Birthday
Blueberry-Splosion
My Dad Said He'd Made Macarons. Expectation Vs. Reality. Still Tasted Divine Though
Stained Glass Cookies
Ordered Cake On Left, Received Cake On Right
They Are Very Yummy Cupcakes That Are Decorated In A Scarier Than Intended Manner
Honestly, what I don't get is these ones that don't follow the original AT ALL. What did you expect? The eyes are those bugged out ones that come in a bag and don't look anything like the original, the nose is upside down, the ears are chocolate chips instead of discs, the colors are inverted (or maybe it was decorated hot and the sugar melted into the cupcake?) and the mouth doesn't look anything like the original. I mean, if you're not skilled or don't have much practice, don't take these liberties or the result will be...what you see here...
This Makes Me Laugh So Much Every Time I See It That Maybe It Was Worth The Fail
Homemade Smiley Face Fries
Merry Christmas Everyone
Ordered A Birthday Cake For My Niece
Chocolate Covered Banana Penguins
Olaf Quesadillas
Bunny Rolls
Rainbow Heart Cookies Surprise
Grooms Cake Disaster, What We Wanted Vs. What We Got
Girlfriend's Halloween Themed Cupcakes
There Are No Words. My Sister Asked For A Peppa Pig Cake. This Is What I Made
Expectations Vs. Reality: Cake Edition
The Force Is Weak With This One
Apparently I’m Still In A Halloween Mindset
My Birthday Cake Attempt. To Be Fair I Had Quite A Few Drinks Beforehand And Not The Right Cooking Utensils
We Tried To Be Creative This Christmas. It Didn't Work Out So Well
It's those damn store-bought bugged out eyes! If you'd just put a little black dot instead of those giant white nipples, it would've looked 100% cute.
I'm Not Good At Frosting
Friend Ordered Guitar Cake. Cake Maker Said She Could Make An Exact Replica
I Would Never Attempt This Again
Devilled Egg Chicks
Paint Splatter Cake
My Sister And I Attempted To Make A Kinder Egg Cake For My Nephew
I Saw A Thing. I Tried To Make A Thing. I Shouldn't Try To Make Things
Nailed It!
Unicorn Of The Sea
Pinterest Finger Cookie Failure My Friend Did. They Were Still Delicious
Dinosaur Cake
Matcha Cake Did Not Matcha Expectations
Spinach Cups For Dinner Tonight
I Made A Mistake Early In The Process And That's Why This Is An Exorcist Swan
My First Attempt At Decorating A Nice Birthday Cake. (I Apologized Profusely To My Mom As I Gave It To Her.)
Note: this post originally had 206 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.
A lot of them make me kind of angry: People do you even look at the original?! Use the same "materials", go get a baking mold already! And please please: Frosting only AFTER baking and AFTER the cake is cold! Does anyone read the instructions? Very little have to do with expection vs. reality. You can't expect anything to look like "A" when you don't follow instructions or use material for "B", or rather "Z" :/
Agreed. I mean some projects are just truly advanced projects, but most of them go wrong because of not reading instructions or taking short cuts.
Load More Replies...
Honestly, most of those "reality" ones look like they weren't even trying...
I'm starting to understand why people have always called me an excellent cook. Some of these are just cringe-worthy. You have to read the instructions. You have to use the right ingredients. You need piping tips for frosting. There's a reason that professionals get paid a lot to make food.
My mom used to say that I knew how to cook better than most of the grown women she knew by the time I was 7. I was so proud of it. Then I grew up and saw the things/way most people cooked. I feel so bad for people and how they were never taught what to do.
Load More Replies... I love 'fails'. Too often in the online world, people try to impress others and make out they have perfect lives.
There's something really sweet and honest about "OMG, look how badly I stuffed up - isn't it funny?!"
Load More Replies... 
I'd have sued the a*s off of some of these 'professional cake makers' you order cakes from. If you can't make it, don't say you can. You don't present someone with a cake that looks nothing like the one they asked for, especially when they're paying for it.!
Sue??? Really? How about just not paying for it. You're going to go to a lawyer and spend time in court over a cake?
Load More Replies...
I'm laughing so hard at these photos that I feel sick! Brilliant post!
The secret to good/excellent cooking, as has been pointed out by others, is pay attention, read instructions, take direction and use the right ingredients. If you're a novice- NO SHORTCUTS! As I have told others, you can never expect quality results if you start out with inferior ingredients or don't follow directions. Obviously these tips can apply to many things in life. I will though, admit that novice cooks/bakers might not understand the importance of temperature- such as butter at room temperature, flour at room temperature (To preserve flour it is sometimes kept at cooler temperatures) and eggs at room temperature. This tip is often missing in a recipe. Working with egg whites is an art. All too often they are not whisked stiff enough or brought to room temperature. Still it was a cringe worthy experience going through these posts.
Hey some of these weren't bad. Yeah they weren't as spectacular as the original but they still looked good!
I doubled over laughing at my desk! Thank you to all who baked and posted!! On a more serious note....people truly need to lighten up. Truly.
lol love it. I hate cooking or baking for this reason-you spend all the stupid time in the kitchen and then it all goes to s**t-even if you follow everything so closely. its definitely not for everyone. it is not as easy as it looks.
How do you even f**k up this bad? Does anyone read the instructions at all? Are these people colour blind? Blind?? how???
I've actually made a lot of these and I've done them pretty well (I'm no amazing baker either). Most of these kitchen fails were not "expectations vs reality" but more "expectation vs I got lazy at the end and this is what came out" or "expectation vs I used wrong materials/skipped steps but hey I think it's edible"
Well they made me laugh, as stupid as they are. Laughter versus Anger?
Oh, and a helpful hint. It's very, very easy to overwarm chocolate for coating things. Never, EVER add milk to thin it. Only use vegetable shortening, or it will turn out soupy.
Okay, this bears repeating till people drill it through their thick skulls. NEVER FROST A WARM CAKE! Seriously, it need to be at LEAST room temperature, preferably a bit cooler even. Star tip cakes done with slathered on icing are not going to work. Star tips take time, and patience, and more time, and more patience. I watched my mother make years and years worth of them for our childhood birthdays. Never once did she half do it. If you know you're not going to have time, just do simple. That said, a couple of these were not that awful, and if my wife tried baking for me as a surprise, well, I'd just be thrilled she'd even tried. And can we all give a nod and a kick to the woman who made her first ever cake? A nod that she managed to do even that well for her first time, and a kick for trying something so complicated for a very first time.
I think with food all that matters is , is it tasty(nd healthy, occasionally). I mean it's just so useless to decorate food when it's just gonna get turned into a smoothie.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA I don´t have the time to click through all 21 pages, but what I saw made me laugh so hard that I almost peed myself!!!
If I tried any creative baking, I'm pretty sure it would turn out like some of these, if not worse.
So many of these just illustrate why our world is such a crappy place to live in. People do not even try to follow the directions. They substitute with lower quality ingredients and expect things to turn out the same. They don't bother to match colors, or even to pay attention to the basic shapes of the originals.......just so much laziness.
True! Those 'pumpkins' with the Rice Krispies on the outside .... they didn't even dye the Krispies orange! No wonder it looked like c**p!
Load More Replies... 
Most of the time it's just people too lazy to do things correctly, or they're comparing to an unfinished "masterpiece" from Pinterest looking crazy, which could be made out of plaster you wouldn't even know. That and the many shitposts that had no interest whatsoever, BoredPanda is looking for views and likes regardless of the content, it seems.
These 'failed' photos are giving me a headache. I get the feeling that these amateurs are those who don't know the first thing about basic cooking or baking and who live off fast food outlets.
I thought these were really funny but some of the "befores" were so extreme they were just as ridiculous as the "afters. It's food. Someone is going to take a quick look at it and then eat it and get on with their life.
So many of these people fail simply because they ice things before they have cooled off. How dumb would you have to be? It makes me suspect people want to fail so they can make it big in articles just like this.
This isn’t funny. It’s ppl who can’t cook batting way out of their league with both instruction reading and cooking.
Is it really "expectations" plural? Am I just stupid on this subject or should it be "expectation"?
i think several of the commenters need to get over it and enjoy the funny pictures and stop telling everyone how to 'do it correctly'....get over yourselves, and yes, Crazy Cow Lady, you especially!!
Yea these are just morons doing things they shouldn't. Im gonna start performing amateur plastic surgery and then post the "fails". If you dont have the ability, materials, skills, or intelligence to do something, maybe you shouldn't. But apparently these people aren't being told the truth often enough.
Baking a strange looking cake doesn't actually HARM anyone though. Seriously, can't you just enjoy something? Nobody has to walk around with a squished muffin forever, it's ENTIRELY different than a surgery or something like such. If you're going to troll people you might as well use something that makes sense.
Load More Replies... A lot of them make me kind of angry: People do you even look at the original?! Use the same "materials", go get a baking mold already! And please please: Frosting only AFTER baking and AFTER the cake is cold! Does anyone read the instructions? Very little have to do with expection vs. reality. You can't expect anything to look like "A" when you don't follow instructions or use material for "B", or rather "Z" :/
Agreed. I mean some projects are just truly advanced projects, but most of them go wrong because of not reading instructions or taking short cuts.
Load More Replies... Honestly, most of those "reality" ones look like they weren't even trying...
I'm starting to understand why people have always called me an excellent cook. Some of these are just cringe-worthy. You have to read the instructions. You have to use the right ingredients. You need piping tips for frosting. There's a reason that professionals get paid a lot to make food.
My mom used to say that I knew how to cook better than most of the grown women she knew by the time I was 7. I was so proud of it. Then I grew up and saw the things/way most people cooked. I feel so bad for people and how they were never taught what to do.
Load More Replies... I love 'fails'. Too often in the online world, people try to impress others and make out they have perfect lives.
There's something really sweet and honest about "OMG, look how badly I stuffed up - isn't it funny?!"
Load More Replies... I'd have sued the a*s off of some of these 'professional cake makers' you order cakes from. If you can't make it, don't say you can. You don't present someone with a cake that looks nothing like the one they asked for, especially when they're paying for it.!
Sue??? Really? How about just not paying for it. You're going to go to a lawyer and spend time in court over a cake?
Load More Replies... I'm laughing so hard at these photos that I feel sick! Brilliant post!
The secret to good/excellent cooking, as has been pointed out by others, is pay attention, read instructions, take direction and use the right ingredients. If you're a novice- NO SHORTCUTS! As I have told others, you can never expect quality results if you start out with inferior ingredients or don't follow directions. Obviously these tips can apply to many things in life. I will though, admit that novice cooks/bakers might not understand the importance of temperature- such as butter at room temperature, flour at room temperature (To preserve flour it is sometimes kept at cooler temperatures) and eggs at room temperature. This tip is often missing in a recipe. Working with egg whites is an art. All too often they are not whisked stiff enough or brought to room temperature. Still it was a cringe worthy experience going through these posts.
Hey some of these weren't bad. Yeah they weren't as spectacular as the original but they still looked good!
I doubled over laughing at my desk! Thank you to all who baked and posted!! On a more serious note....people truly need to lighten up. Truly.
lol love it. I hate cooking or baking for this reason-you spend all the stupid time in the kitchen and then it all goes to s**t-even if you follow everything so closely. its definitely not for everyone. it is not as easy as it looks.
How do you even f**k up this bad? Does anyone read the instructions at all? Are these people colour blind? Blind?? how???
I've actually made a lot of these and I've done them pretty well (I'm no amazing baker either). Most of these kitchen fails were not "expectations vs reality" but more "expectation vs I got lazy at the end and this is what came out" or "expectation vs I used wrong materials/skipped steps but hey I think it's edible"
Well they made me laugh, as stupid as they are. Laughter versus Anger?
Oh, and a helpful hint. It's very, very easy to overwarm chocolate for coating things. Never, EVER add milk to thin it. Only use vegetable shortening, or it will turn out soupy.
Okay, this bears repeating till people drill it through their thick skulls. NEVER FROST A WARM CAKE! Seriously, it need to be at LEAST room temperature, preferably a bit cooler even. Star tip cakes done with slathered on icing are not going to work. Star tips take time, and patience, and more time, and more patience. I watched my mother make years and years worth of them for our childhood birthdays. Never once did she half do it. If you know you're not going to have time, just do simple. That said, a couple of these were not that awful, and if my wife tried baking for me as a surprise, well, I'd just be thrilled she'd even tried. And can we all give a nod and a kick to the woman who made her first ever cake? A nod that she managed to do even that well for her first time, and a kick for trying something so complicated for a very first time.
I think with food all that matters is , is it tasty(nd healthy, occasionally). I mean it's just so useless to decorate food when it's just gonna get turned into a smoothie.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA I don´t have the time to click through all 21 pages, but what I saw made me laugh so hard that I almost peed myself!!!
If I tried any creative baking, I'm pretty sure it would turn out like some of these, if not worse.
So many of these just illustrate why our world is such a crappy place to live in. People do not even try to follow the directions. They substitute with lower quality ingredients and expect things to turn out the same. They don't bother to match colors, or even to pay attention to the basic shapes of the originals.......just so much laziness.
True! Those 'pumpkins' with the Rice Krispies on the outside .... they didn't even dye the Krispies orange! No wonder it looked like c**p!
Load More Replies... Most of the time it's just people too lazy to do things correctly, or they're comparing to an unfinished "masterpiece" from Pinterest looking crazy, which could be made out of plaster you wouldn't even know. That and the many shitposts that had no interest whatsoever, BoredPanda is looking for views and likes regardless of the content, it seems.
These 'failed' photos are giving me a headache. I get the feeling that these amateurs are those who don't know the first thing about basic cooking or baking and who live off fast food outlets.
I thought these were really funny but some of the "befores" were so extreme they were just as ridiculous as the "afters. It's food. Someone is going to take a quick look at it and then eat it and get on with their life.
So many of these people fail simply because they ice things before they have cooled off. How dumb would you have to be? It makes me suspect people want to fail so they can make it big in articles just like this.
This isn’t funny. It’s ppl who can’t cook batting way out of their league with both instruction reading and cooking.
Is it really "expectations" plural? Am I just stupid on this subject or should it be "expectation"?
i think several of the commenters need to get over it and enjoy the funny pictures and stop telling everyone how to 'do it correctly'....get over yourselves, and yes, Crazy Cow Lady, you especially!!
Yea these are just morons doing things they shouldn't. Im gonna start performing amateur plastic surgery and then post the "fails". If you dont have the ability, materials, skills, or intelligence to do something, maybe you shouldn't. But apparently these people aren't being told the truth often enough.
Baking a strange looking cake doesn't actually HARM anyone though. Seriously, can't you just enjoy something? Nobody has to walk around with a squished muffin forever, it's ENTIRELY different than a surgery or something like such. If you're going to troll people you might as well use something that makes sense.
Load More Replies...